MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday it would start the first major navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Soviet times, the latest move by an increasingly assertive Moscow to demonstrate its military might.

"The aim of the sorties is to ensure a naval presence in tactically important regions of the world ocean," Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told President Vladimir Putin, who wished the sailors well. The rest of the meeting was closed.

Serdyukov said 11 ships, including an aircraft carrier, would take part in the sortie and be backed up by 47 aircraft -- including strategic bombers

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday it would start the first major navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Soviet times, the latest move by an increasingly assertive Moscow to demonstrate its military might.

"The aim of the sorties is to ensure a naval presence in tactically important regions of the world ocean," Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told President Vladimir Putin, who wished the sailors well. The rest of the meeting was closed.

Serdyukov said 11 ships, including an aircraft carrier, would take part in the sortie and be backed up by 47 aircraft -- including strategic bombers

Fortunately the foresight of our current Government has ensured that the Royal Navy has two rowing boats and a Rib stationed in Gibralter to keep the Russian Navy under observation and counter any suspicious moves they may make.
However due to this heavy use of Royal Navy resources it only leaves three canoes and a pedalo to patrol the coastline of the UK

Fortunately the foresight of our current Government has ensured that the Royal Navy has two rowing boats and a Rib stationed in Gibralter to keep the Russian Navy under observation and counter any suspicious moves they may make.
However due to this heavy use of Royal Navy resources it only leaves three canoes and a pedalo to patrol the coastline of the UK

Your looking at a totally different deployment pattern for the Russan Navy -those 11 ships wll spend 10 months of the year in port and then do a surge deployment into the North Atlantic and maybe the med - looks good on Russian TV (they cover such things a lot), but is no way to run a navy. We currently on the other hand have 3 frigates EoS, and 2 in the Med.

Combined with the fact that all but 2 on the Northern fleets destroyers/frigates/crusers are 20+ years old and the carrier doesn't work properly, and the point that while the Russian Navy is building 5 new corvettes and 5 new diseal subs, it has ONE new destroyer and ONE new SSN on the stocks, and despite the gobbing off of the Def Sec no prospects of new carriers (the new dry dock to replace the old one in the Ukrane has yet to be built, and even then it is planned to use it mostly of LNG tankers), I'm not worried.

And if they stop off in Malta I'll throw rocks at them just to be sure